


lean a little to the left

by demotu



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Post-Game(s), real life girlfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 07:49:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1170537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demotu/pseuds/demotu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Kane leaned to his left, trying to coax the insolent puck wide with a little body English. Then he leaned harder. Then he smacked himself on the forehead when he realized what was about to happen."</p>
            </blockquote>





	lean a little to the left

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a post-game one-shot in response to Kaner's empty net own-goal and Laz's [elegant description](http://www.suntimes.com/sports/24921511-419/hawks-overcome-own-goal-to-beat-oilers-5-3.html) of his reaction, which is the source of the summary of this fic. It now covers three weeks of games, starting with the Edmonton win and ending with the San Jose loss. To be clear: I take canon compliant, in Hockey RPF, to mean that the careers and general life history of the characters as widely known are adhered to. I do not mean every detail lines up with their real lives (nor would I want it to). I have not tagged with their real-life girlfriends specifically, but both appear either in name or character. 
> 
> This is the first fic I have finished in four and a half years, and that is definitely in large part thanks to [electrumqueen](http://archiveofourown.org/users/electrumqueen/pseuds/electrumqueen). She cheerlead and beta'd this to fruition! And if you want to, come hang with me on tumblr (also [demotu](http://demotu.tumblr.com/)); it's pretty much Blackhawks hockey all the time.

~

 

**January 12, 2014**

_Chicago Blackhawks win 5-3 over the Edmonton Oilers_

 

~

 

There’s no skate after they beat Edmonton. Pat comes in anyway, to meet up with a couple of the trainers and do some light maintenance work. He doesn’t want to wear himself out, but his condo is too quiet. The IceHouse is quiet, too, just a few guys milling around on the off-day, meeting with the staff about strained muscles or broken gear or lingering colds. Jonny comes into the gym just as Pat’s winding down on the bike, but he’s in jeans and heads right over to Pat’s side, head tucked down while he types something on his phone.

Pat gives Jonny a sideways look as he leans against the neighbouring bike. Jonny waves one hand, as if to say,  _don’t let me interrupt you,_  and goes back to texting, but Pat is pretty much done anyway, so he dismounts and wipes down and watches Jonny.

“Lunch?” Pat says eventually, when Jonny doesn’t look up from his phone.

“Yeah. I’ve got to talk to Mike, but I’ll meet you in the room.”

“I’ve got to stretch out anyway. Don’t rush.”

“Never do.”

Pat watches him go before dropping to the mat. His hips have been keeping him up, lately, and he needs to work them out.

 

~

 

“Are you pissed about it?” Jonny asks once they’ve ordered food, wraps and salad and fries for both of them, because at this point in the season Pat isn’t the only one working hard to keep the weight on.

“Pissed about?”

“The own goal,” Jonny says, making a face like it should be obvious.

Maybe it should be, but Pat’s been… his head hasn’t been all here, since Christmas. He knows that.

“I would have been,” Jonny adds. “That kind of thing keeps me up at night.”

“I know,” Pat says, huffing a laugh. “You’re shit at letting things go when there’s nothing you could have done. That’s not my problem, though.”

“I can let shit go,” Jonny protests. “When we win, at least. Otherwise…”

“Yeah, otherwise,” Pat agrees. He leans over his water, biting at the straw before taking a sip. “It was weird watching it go in. Felt kind of like I wasn’t in the game at all for a moment.”

Jonny’s brow furrows. “What d’you mean?”

Pat shrugs. He’s not sure what he means, just like he’s not quite sure where his life is, right now.

“Amanda and I split.”

That wasn’t what he meant to say, but that’s just par for the course, lately.

“Oh, shit,” Jonny says, sitting upright and looking more startled than Pat would have expected. “That’s—I’m sorry. I thought you guys were…”

“Solid?”

“Yeah. Like, forever solid. I figured you’d be asking her to, to marry you or something. Wasn’t she thinking of moving in to your place last fall?”

Pat sucks on his straw, trying to figure out how to explain. If he wants to, even.

“She likes her roommates, already had a lease. It would have been up in May, though.” It’s not an answer, not to what Jonny was actually asking.

Jonny knows it, and has never let Pat get away with shit. He flicks Pat’s forearm where it’s resting on the table, hard. “When did this happen? You’ve been, I dunno, I hadn’t noticed anything.”

“You haven’t?” Pat asks, genuinely curious. He knows he can’t hide his emotions for shit, he’s never been able to. Jonny’s not exactly intuitive, but he keeps tabs on his team, on his guys. Pat’s always been Jonny’s guy, even when they haven’t been close, even when they haven’t done more than exchange text messages in months. Less and more than Pat’s wanted, sometimes. Less, because Jonny’s always held himself back from Pat, for reasons Pat has never been able to figure out, but it’s also too subtle for Pat to ever actually ask about. More, because sometimes Pat can’t stand the way Jonny watches, even if it’s only ever just that, now. Even when it wasn’t just watching, though, it had felt like it.

“It was just after Christmas. The twenty-eighth.”

“You’re always quiet after Christmas. Missing your family.”

“Oh. True.”

“And Jesus, Pat. That’s more than two weeks ago. You could have said something earlier.”

“Maybe I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“You always talk about it.”

And fuck if that isn’t true. Pat’s trained by three sisters to talk through his shit, talk to his friends about what’s going on in his life. He’s always been more open than most of the guys in the room about who he’s seeing and how it’s going, and only partly because he grew up in a role as younger brother on the team who has zero privacy. And locker rooms always involve a lot of kvetching about wives and girlfriends.

He never bitched about Amanda, though. She didn’t give him reason to, and she wasn’t one of the WAGs who are involved in the team and everybody knows well enough to tell him to get over an argument or that she was being unreasonable or whatever. She wasn’t like Jonny’s girlfriend, either, who’s comfortable standing in the spotlight with Jonny. Amanda would have freaked if she thought he was talking about her to the team; Pat had actually seen Lindsey laugh when Sharpy had insinuated that Jonny had bragged about her more than once.

“Last thing you told me about her was that she was perfect for you. Was it—did she dump you?” Jonny sounds genuinely bewildered at that idea, and Pat has to laugh.

“Thanks for sounding so shocked, man,” Pat says, mocking but still sincere.

“I just mean that you’re, I mean, you’re Patrick Kane.”

That’s not so flattering, really.

“Implying she was dating me because I’m a celebrity—”

“No!” Jonny interrupts, and then the food interrupts him, forcing them into a tense silence while everything gets set down.

“Implying  _that_  doesn’t say a lot about her  _or_  me,” Pat finishes quickly once the server's gone, before Jonny can keep going. “She wasn’t like that. Not like some girlfriends we could talk about.”

“Fuck you,” Jonny says, but it isn’t heated in the slightest. It’s an old argument, and mostly one Seabs or Sharpy has with Jonny while Pat watches. “I  _meant_ , you’re Patrick Kane, you’re a great guy. Better than most of the assholes in the league, on top of all the rich and famous shit. At hockey, but also at, you know, other shit.”

“Other shit?” Pat says, grinning at him. “Life skills? Emotional intelligence? Sex god? Please list what personality traits I have that fall into this category.”

“Sex god, my ass,” which is  _such a good opening_  that Pat almost follows up on it, just manages to bite down on his lower lip as their server appears to refill their water glasses.

Jonny flushes and busies himself with his salad for a couple of minutes, until Pat takes pity on him and sighs.

“It was… sort of mutual? I don’t know. It was her idea, I guess, but maybe I was waiting for it.”

“Since when?” Jonny demands, because he’s gotten it into his head that Pat’s holding back, and if there’s one thing Jonny hates, it’s when they hold anything back. Give it your all, fully commit, 110%—they’ve always chafed about that, because Jonny doesn’t get that that’s not how everybody plays. Pat plays well when he finds a space in his head that isn’t about forcing it, it’s about  _finding_  it. Knowing it, inside and out, without having the words to explain it. Pushing harder just fogs it up, most of the time.

It’s not that Pat’s trying not to explain, it’s that he doesn’t know how to. Not without—not without saying more than he can. Over lunch, in public—to  _Jonny._

“It was just, you know,” he flails a little. “The usual shit. Me not being fully committed, her wanting some sort of proof.”

“Like a ring?”

“No—maybe? I didn’t ask.”

“But if you were into her, in love with her or whatever, why not—”

“I wasn’t.”

“Oh. Well then.” Jonny watches him, inscrutable. “That whole time?”

Fuck him for asking the right question.

“I dunno man. I thought I was. She was awesome? Is awesome.” She’s not  _dead,_  Jesus. “But I was just fooling myself, I guess.”

“You’d been dating since before Switzerland. That’s a long time to be with someone but not actually in love with them.”

Jonny’s an asshole, but he’s usually right. Pat makes a face at him and finishes his wrap instead of answering. He feels like he did in the game, watching the puck slide and slide and slide, except it isn’t making it. He can’t stand the idea that it won’t, even more than knowing then that it will, can’t stand that he’ll be watching forever.

“Well?” Jonny prods.

“This isn’t actually any of your business,” Pat bitches at him.

“Something’s fucking you up, and you’re my—my teammate. That makes it my business,” says Jonny, all fluffed up, like a peacock if peacocks were hockey captains who got overly invested in their wingers’ love lives.

“I thought you said you didn’t notice anything was wrong with me.”

“I did yesterday, in practice. That’s why we’re having lunch today.”

“Still not your business.”

“Sure is.”

“Nope.”

“Yep.”

A standoff of glares interspersed with cleaning off their plates follows, with Jonny flagging down the waiter for the bill.

It would be easier if Pat didn’t like having Jonny on him like this. They’re always in each other’s spaces, about the game, about life in general, because living parallel to each other like this means they really only have each other to understand, but Jonny hasn’t ever seemed interested in the inner workings of Patrick Kane, not in the way his mom or Erica or even Sharpy are. It makes Pat feel greedy, reckless to find a way to get more of Jonny wondering how he’s doing, and  _why_ , not just what or where or with whom.

Jonny pays and then cracks his neck, hands thrumming on the table before he stands up. “I guess it isn’t my business, but if you wanted to tell me, I’d listen.”

“I told her about you.”

Jonny doesn’t flinch, or even really change the expression on his face. It’d be impressive if Pat thought he understood what Pat was saying.

“Told her what, that I’m the captain of—” he breaks off, and  _then_  flinches. “About?”

“Yeah,” Pat says, his voice a bit high, mimicking Jonny’s. “Around Thanksgiving. The real one.”

Jonny stares at him, and Pat can’t tell what he’s thinking at all, which is fucking creepy because Jonny’s an open book.

“I… was that… okay, no, wait,” he says, grabbing his coat off the bench and shrugging it on. “Let’s go to mine.”

“She won’t say anything,” Pat says, even as he’s standing and tucking his beanie on, sliding his arms into his jacket and following Jonny out the door. “She wouldn’t.”

“Wait,” Jonny says firmly. “At—just wait til we’re at mine, okay?”

Pat nods, chewing on his lip, and goes to find his car.

 

~

 

If Pat was betting on it, he’d have said that if they hadn’t ever brought it up by now, they were never going to. It’s weird to think he’s talked more about the fact that he and Jonny used to fuck with Amanda than with Jonny, but if the determined look on Jonny’s face is any indication, it’s not going to stay that way.

“Drink?”

“No. Yes,” Pat says. “Is this that kind of a conversation?”

“I don’t know what kind of conversation this is, Patrick,” Jonny says, sharp and tense on the other side of the kitchen counter. “We’re talking about your break-up, not mine.”

“There’s really not that much to talk about.”

“Except the part where you outed me to her.”

“I outed  _me_  to her, actually,” Pat says, way more calmly than he feels. He kicks the stool out from the counter and pulls himself up on it. “You were just… part of the story. The background, whatever. Evidence.”

“Thanks for that,” Jonny says flatly. He turns his back and opens the fridge. Pat chews on his lips while Jonny digs out two beers and opens them, tugging up his shirt to twist off the caps. Pat ends up tracking Jonny’s hands through the whole thing, even after he slides one of the bottles across the table and swallows down a quarter of his own in one go. It isn’t until Jonny puts the bottle down with a sharp click that Pat realizes that Jonny might be upset not because Pat outed him to Pat’s ex-girlfriend but because it sounded like it didn’t matter that it was  _him_.

He’s trying to figure out how to, not take it back, but explain that it wasn’t that it being Jonny in the story was incidental to  _him_  without bulldozing straight through awkward references to history into embarrassing discussions of what the hell was that, anyway, with a dash of how did Pat feel about it now.

“Why did you tell her?” Jonny asks, saving them both from whatever shit was going to fall out of Pat’s mouth without his permission this time.

“It felt wrong to keep it from her,” Pat says with a shrug. “We’d been dating for ages. Letting her know that I’m not, I’m not completely straight or whatever seemed fair.”

“But you weren’t serious about her.”

“I was! Then. I wasn’t thinking we’d break up then.”

“So you weren’t in love with her, but you thought it was time to come out to her to be  _fair_?” Jonny looks, frankly, bewildered, and a little more pissed off than Pat thinks he has any right to be.

“Fuck off. It’s not like you’re all in touch with your emotions.” Pat drinks deeply, trying to wash out the guilty feeling in his gut. He wasn’t trying to string Amanda along, she was fun, and gorgeous, and good company—everything he should want in a woman—but maybe he was stringing himself along, because after… After they broke up he wasn’t sad about what could have been. Or even about what was; she went from a part of his daily life to just, not. He hadn’t realized it would be easy until it was.

“I know the difference between something serious and something that’s not going to last more than a couple months—or apparently, a couple of  _weeks._ ”

“Fuck  _you_ ,” Pat bites out, not at all joking this time. Because, fuck, they weren’t serious. Jonny made that absolutely clear, and Pat thought it was fine with him, but it’s two years later and it still isn’t easy. They’re okay, they always were okay, except when they were angry about entirely unrelated things, and Pat never had a picture in his head of the way his life would have been if it had kept going, not like with Amanda, but he somehow misses it anyway.

He wonders if that’s what Amanda meant when she’d say  _I just don’t think you’re all in_  and  _I know you care about me, Pat, but sometimes it’s like you’re wishing you were somewhere else_. She hadn’t said it was over because of what Pat had told her, at the time said it was fine and he obviously was into girls so as long as that was enough for him it didn’t bother her, but maybe. Maybe she was able to tell, when Pat couldn’t himself, that he wasn’t really in love with her. He doesn’t think she was worried about the  _Jonny_  bit, even though she was curious. Pat puts his beer down and slides off the stool.

“She’s not gonna say anything. Not to anyone. She won’t out me, and she can’t out you without outing me, not that she would, so just forget about it, okay?”

“I’m not worried about that,” Jonny says, following him back to the door.

“No?”

“No, I know Amanda isn’t like that.”

Jonny hardly knew Amanda at all. Pat shouldn’t be feeling charitable, but he also feels like he already doesn’t know what they’re fighting about, so he leaves it unsaid and fumbles for his boots instead.

“Pat, wait, come on.” Jonny looks frustrated, tugging on the hem of Pat’s shirt until he puts the boot down and gives Jonny an unimpressed look.

“What.”

“I just—I want to know what you told her.”

“Why?”

Jonny makes a face that says that Pat’s supposed to know why, already, but Pat honestly has no clue. It’s been three and a half years since there first was anything to talk about, and they never have. Jonny has a girlfriend. It wouldn’t  _matter_  if Jonny didn't have a girlfriend, because Pat isn’t stupid enough to go there again, even if Jonny would.

“Jesus, man. I told her I was bi, and she asked if I’d ever slept with a guy, and then who. It was pretty much that simple.”

“So you just said we slept together.”

“Not like,  _once_. She knows it was a few times.”

“A few?”

“For a while, whatever,” Pat says, frustrated. He steps back around Jonny into the apartment to avoid his gaze.

“It was  _a year and a half_.”

“What was?” Pat snaps, voice going loud. “Because I’m pretty sure it was nothing.”  _To you_ , he wants to add, maybe should because Jonny looks like he’s been slapped, but fuck him if Pat is going to be the one admitting it was ever more than nothing.

“It wasn’t—shit, Peeks,” and the nickname makes Pat flinch, because Jonny only calls him that on the ice or fondly, and this is neither. “You—we’re friends. It couldn’t have been nothing. I wouldn’t fuck around with someone like that if it was  _nothing_.”

“Oh yeah?” Pat asks, meanly. “When’re you popping the question to Linds, then?”

Jonny scrubs his hands through his hair. “We’re not talking about her.”

“I’m making a point.”

“Which is?”

“That you don’t exactly need to care about someone to let them suck your dick.”

Jonny goes white, then red. “Get out.”

“Oh, now I’m allowed to leave?”

“Now I’m throwing you out, asshole.”

“Can’t throw me out if I’m already leaving,” Pat snaps, shoving Jonny back to get to his boots. Jonny catches his arm and pulls him back, sharp enough to pull at the socket of his arm uncomfortably. “Watch it, motherfucker.”

Jonny drops his arm like it’s burning, snatching his own hand back against his chest. “Sorry, sorry.”

Pat ignores him, taking advantage of Jonny’s sudden passivity to put on his boots and pull his jacket out of the closet. He doesn’t know how this all got away from him, from the both of them. He doesn’t know how expected anything more, either—they couldn’t talk about it when it was happening, why would it be any different now that it’s ancient history? He doesn’t try to say anything more, and neither does Jonny.

He has to sit in his car for twenty minutes before he feels calm enough to drive.

 

~

 

**January 14th, 2014**

_Chicago Blackhawks lose in OT, 3-2 to the Colorado Avalanche._

 

~

 

The good thing about a homestand is that everybody stays out of each other's space, at least this far into the season. It makes it easy to avoid Tazer through the frustrating loss against Colorado, and Pat figures by the time they're back on the road they'll be back to normal, pretending they're just good friends out of proximity, that they didn't spend a year and a half fucking every road trip and sometimes in between.

Except two days after the Avalanche, Jonny comes by with apology scotch.

“I think I owe you half of this,” Pat says, watching Jonny scratch at his neck uneasily in the doorway. “You want?”

“Uh, I’m not drinking half a bottle of scotch the day before a game.”

“Me neither, asshole,” Pat says, rolling his eyes. Whatever the media says, Jonny knows that Pat hardly drinks during the season, not since he was a teenager. “I meant, half the apology.”

“It’s not an apology.”

“Tazer.” Pat gives him an exasperated look, except he thinks it veers a little into fond, judging by the way Jonny flushes and darts his eyes off to the side. “You only ever buy me scotch when you think I’m pissed at you.”

“That’s not—”

“Rookie year, that time you made fun of me for crying after talking to my parents?”

“That—”

“At the oh-twelve convention, which could have been about six things but was probably about your idiot concussion?”

“I—”

“Olympics,  _three fucking bottles_  of what I think is the most expensive stuff you could find, as if you’d scored the golden fucking goal yourself.

“Fine, Jesus,” Jonny says loudly, arms crossed. “I’m sorry.”

“For?”

“Really?”

“I honestly don’t know what happened last time,” Pat says, because he’s been thinking about nothing else for two days straight, and he’s fucking tired of not talking about it. The hours of non-conversation with Amanda the days before they broke up are bleeding into the years of non-conversation with Jonny and he’s just so done with it. “Or, like, ever.”

Pat watches as Jonny’s face goes through a series of pretty much indescribable motions, before settling into flat lips and a furrowed brow.

“Can I come in?”

“You sure?”

“I need to be? To just come in?”

“If you come in,” Pat warns, “I’m pouring two glasses of this. We—there’s more to this than just saying sorry.”

Jonny sighs but pushes Pat aside, his hand squeezing Pat’s shoulder on the way by. It’s as much of an acknowledgement of everything that happened before as anything Jonny said last time. Pat takes a shallow breath and shuts the door.

 

~

 

“So.”

“So,” Pat echos, sticking his nose in his glass before taking a sip.

Jonny’s tucked into the corner of the sectional, feet up and glass resting on one knee. Pat sinks a little further into the other end of the couch, dropping his head back. He presses his cheek to the back of the couch to watch Jonny.

“I don’t—”

“Are you—”

They both break off, and Jonny starts laughing, a low, small sound as he ducks his head behind his knees. “This is so stupid,” he says, muffled. “I feel like if we say it out loud…”

“Then it’s suddenly going to matter?”

Jonny sighs and rubs his forehead against a knee before looking up again. “It always mattered. I don’t know what I did to make you think it didn’t.”

“Seriously?” Pat says, incredulous. “I’d run out of fingers  _and_  toes if I tried to count the number of times you said _this stays in the hotel room_  or _it’s just sex_  or  _you should ask her out_.”

 _“Pat_ ,” Jonny says, voice rough. “It  _was_  just sex. But that didn’t mean it was just anything, for me.”

“That makes about zero sense,” Pat says, flatly.

“I mean I wasn’t fucking kidding myself about it, okay?” Jonny leans over to put his glass down, feet dropping to the floor. It leaves his hands free to rub across his face, around his neck, like Pat’s watched him do a hundred times in interviews. “We weren’t dating, I’m not going to pretend we were. But it was still you, it still mattered.”

The thing that doesn’t, that has never made sense to Pat is that he and Jonny have never been less  _friends_  than when they were fucking. They made it past being rookies together, glued to each other in experience and position and duty to make the Hawks relevant again. They found their own places in Chicago, on the team and outside it, figured out how to stay in touch with old friends and spend time with new ones, and just… stopped needing to measure themselves against the other. It turned out there wasn’t a lot more to their friendship than the competition, and they somehow ended up the sort of casual friends who would eat lunch together and play video games and chat on the ice and never talk about anything hard or significant. Except, then they started screwing around on the road. Pat’s not really sure if that made it worse, made them less honest and open, or if that was just inertia.

They probably never would have started up if they’d been closer, in hindsight. It would have been too hard to keep it away from everything else in their lives. So when Jonny says that it mattered, Pat doesn’t know what that means, because he’d thought the point was that it didn’t. But—

“Did you want us to be?”

“To be what?” Jonny echoes, frowning.

“Dating.” The word kind of sticks in Pat’s mouth. He takes another sip of the scotch, trying to clear it out. Jonny stares at him, mouth open, until Pat can’t take the silence and makes a screwed up face at him. “Well?”

“I can’t believe you’re asking me that.”

“Because I’m not supposed to?” Pat asks. “Or because you think I never thought about it?”

“Because it was  _two years ago._ ”

“That’s not a no.”

“It’s not—Kaner, we were hardly friends by the end of it.”

Pat licks a stripe along the rim of his tumbler and thinks  _that’s not a no, either._

“Is this about Amanda?” Jonny demands.

“What?”

“I’m not gonna be a rebound, if that’s what—”

“No, fucker,” Pat cuts him off, feeling pissed because that isn’t what this is about at all. “What the hell, get over yourself.”

Except Jonny’s face just sort of  _breaks_. He turns his head away, but Pat sees it anyway. It floors him like an OT loss, instant and game-changing and exactly the answer to the question Pat's been asking. Pat’s fingers clench around his glass as Jonny reaches out for his before downing it. Jonny pours himself another without glancing at Pat, hands not quite steady, but when he puts the bottle down he just leans onto his knees and stares at it, eyes blinking shut like he isn’t quite here.

“Jon—”

“I am. Over myself. It.”

 _Over you_ , Pat hears.

“If you wanted more, then why did you…” Pat trails off, thinking of what it felt like at the time. How the only time he felt like he had Jonny’s full attention, off the ice, was when they got off together, but as soon as it was done Jonny would step away again. It hadn’t ever felt like a rejection, because until it hadn’t, it always happened again. It wasn’t cruel, and it never seemed forced. But outside of the sex, Jonny pretty much left him alone, sat next to Seabs or the rookies in the plane, caught rides with different teammates, invited other friends over for video games. “It never seemed like you wanted more.”

Jonny shakes his head. “You weren’t for me. It was easier not to ask.”

“I wasn’t  _for you_?” Pat echos, incredulous. “What—I’m not  _for_  anybody, what the fuck.”

“I don’t mean it like that.”

“How, then.”

“I…” Jonny trails off, hands tightening together between his knees. He pushes back, leaning into the couch and staring up at the ceiling. “Everybody wants to be with you. As like, a friend, but sometimes more, if they’re into that or whatever. I’m not that kind of guy, I’ve never been the, like, social centre of a team even though I’m always captain. And that’s, that’s okay, I know my role, but I wasn’t gonna try and pretend that you were gonna see anything like that in me. I got a part of you no one else did, for a while, and that was good enough.”

Pat sits silently for a minute, turning over Jonny’s really fucking confusing explanation. It’s more words than he’s ever gotten out of Jonny on the topic of  _them_ , so as much as he wants to throw back that none of that made any sense at all, he can’t. If Jonny’s going to be honest, the least he can do is try and figure out what he’s being honest about.

“If it’s any consolation or whatever, I don’t think it makes much sense either,” Jonny offers, rueful. “I wouldn’t do it again, for sure.”

And that’s… pretty final, Pat thinks. He wants to push, and ask, and point out that Jonny has never—not then and not now, either—asked what Pat wants, but the thing is, Pat has no  _idea_  what he wants. Apparently, it doesn’t matter. Jonny’s figured his own shit out, moved on from bad decisions and  _wanting Pat_. Pat never got the chance to catch up. Isn’t going to, by the looks of it.

“Okay,” Pat says, but it isn’t. “You’re totally crazy, man, but okay.”

“Yeah, a little,” Jonny admits, finally glancing over at Pat and meeting his eyes with a small smile.

“So I guess we broke the seal or whatever,” Pat says, trying for a grin back and getting halfway there. There isn’t any going back, Jonny doesn’t want to and that makes it easy for Pat, because he doesn’t know what he wants, anyway. Maybe it was just resolution, and maybe this can be it. Maybe he can get the parts of Jonny that have been cut off from him, now.

“By saying it?”

“Yeah. We fucked.”

“A  _lot_.”

“For like, well over a year.”

“Pretty sure I took your gay virginity.”

“Pretty sure we never actually assfucked, jerkface.”

“Whatever, balls were touching.”

Pat laughs, loud and unexpected and suddenly he’s sure they can do this. Be friends, and be so much better at it than they have been. The broad smile Jonny’s giving him back says the same.

“Tazer,” Pat says when he stops laughing, finding a serious note. “You are totally the heart of this team, you know. I know you’re awkward as fuck, we all know that, but we still love you. You’re the only captain we’d ever want, okay? You should know that.”

“I do,” Jonny admits, scrunching up his nose. “Now, I guess. It took a while? I dunno. It was hard to get there, to be sure of it.”

“Everyone respected you from day one.”

“Respect is one thing.” Jonny shrugs.

Respect is everything, Pat thinks, but maybe he and Jonny went opposite directions on that one. Pat’s never worried about finding a place on the team, finding friends who want to spend time together on and off the ice, having people around whom he loves and who love him, but making people believe in him—believe that he works so fucking hard, pays so much attention, gives everything of himself to the game—that always feels like the hard bit. Even when he gets it (and he has it, from Tazer, from the team, from the coaches, even the media, these days) he never quite trusts it.

When he looks back at Jonny again, he’s watching him steadily, like he knows exactly what Pat’s thinking. Pat gives him a salute with his glass and finishes it off.

“Wanna watch the Ducks and Canucks from last night?”

“Jesus, no,” Jonny says with a grimace. “But I will if you do.”

 

~

 

**January 19th, 2014**

_Chicago Blackhawks win in a shootout, 3-2 over the Boston Bruins_

 

~

 

Pat calls Jonny up the evening before an off day when coach has forbidden them from even working out, and says “I need a new suit, my good one’s worn through.”

“You had a good one?”

“Hey now,” Pat says. “All my suits are baller, this one was just the best.”

“Sure,” answers Jonny, sounding amused and skeptical. “What do I have to do with this?”

“You’re coming shopping with me tomorrow.” They’ve been good since  _The Talk_  earlier in the week, really good. They haven’t talked about the serious stuff again, but it hasn’t felt like they’re avoiding it, either. Pat wants to hold on to whatever this new equilibrium is with Jonny.

“What if I’m busy?”

“Come on, Tazer,” Pat whines. “You like buying clothes, and you like showing me up. It’ll be perfect.”

“Being gay doesn’t actually mean I have to like clothes shopping,” Jonny says, but it’s all warm and amused.

“Yeah yeah, you’re such a flaming stereotype of a gay pro hockey player,” Pat answers, rolling his eyes and hoping Jonny can hear it. “Come over and I’ll make brunch, at like, ten or something.”

“You come over here,” Jonny bargains. “Lindsey’s over tonight, I don’t want to run out on her.”

Pat hesitates. Does Jonny even  _get_  how confusing he is, sometimes?

“Pat?”

“Uh, yeah. I’m bringing bacon, though.”

“You fucking better.”

 

~

 

Lindsey opens the door, dressed and perfect and smiling, when Pat shows up at ten thirty the next morning. She takes the shopping bag from him and gives him a one-armed hug.

“Jon’s in the shower,” she says, the scrunch of her nose saying just how much she approves of Jonny’s inability to get going at a reasonable hour on his off-days. “He should be out soon.”

“At least he’s up,” Pat says, commiserating. He likes Lindsey, even if her existence confuses the fuck out of him. She’s fun and open and doesn’t give a hell of a lot of fucks, which Pat can relate to. Pat ditches his coat and then follows her to the kitchen, where she’s dropped the bag and is pulling eggs out of the fridge.

“You eating with us?”

“No,” she says, “Late brunch with my friend Katie, she should be here any minute. I’ll let you boys catch up.”

“I don’t need to catch up with Kaner, I see him every fucking day,” Jonny says, pulling on an undershirt as he comes into the kitchen. Other than that, he’s only got boxers on, and Pat takes advantage of being behind Lindsey to give him a blatant once-over, grinning at Jonny’s eye-roll.

“You’re a fucking exhibitionist, Tazer,” he says instead of the more appreciative comments running through his head.

Lindsey grins at Pat sharply, and he remembers suddenly that this is a woman who (a) played lingerie football, (b) posed for Playboy, and (c) posts pictures to twitter that he would kill any of his sisters for. He hadn’t really thought of that as being something she’d have in common with Jonny, but. He blushes a little, but she just leans over and smacks Jonny on the ass.

“Not something I complain about,” she says, and then pulls out her phone. “Katie’s here, I’ll just meet her downstairs. Don’t let him buy anything that doesn’t fit, Jon.”

“Hey, that’s just because my weight fluctuates—”

“–drops like a rock, you mean—”

“–over the course of a season like  _any hockey player including Jonathan fucking Toews,”_  Pat finishes loudly.

After Lindsey kisses Jonny and leaves, Pat busies himself in brunch. Jonny parks himself at the island with a cup of coffee and just kind of stares for long enough that Pat smacks him on the arm with a (clean, he’s not starting a food fight in Jonny’s kitchen, that’s always a bad idea) spatula.

“What.”

“No, you, what.”

“ _Me what_  what _?_ ”

Jonny rolls his eyes. “ _Ask_. I know it’s killing you.”

“Ask what?” Pat says, lost.

“Uh, the question you for some reason haven’t asked since me and Lindsey started dating?”

“Oh, that.”

“Yeah,  _that._ ”

Pat blushes and turns back to the eggs. “It’s none of my business.”

“That doesn’t mean you aren’t wondering. That doesn’t mean I haven’t overheard you and Seabs and Sharpy  _and_  Duncs, who I honestly thought more of, having a fifteen minute conversation over if she’s my beard, whether or not we actually fuck, and maybe I’m actually bisexual and that Sharpy thinks this is all an elaborate prank?”

Jonny actually sounds kind of pissed off by the time he gets to the end of that, and maybe Pat can understand. Not asking might have felt more polite, but gossiping about him behind his back (except, less so than they thought, but they were really drunk at that party) is pretty not cool.

“I—okay. Is she? Like, actually your girlfriend?”

“That’s what I call her,” Jonny answers, steady. “And she calls me her boyfriend.”

“Yeah, I know," Pat says, leaning against the counter with one hip so he can stir the eggs and watch Jonny, whose expression is definitely milder than Pat would have expected. “But like, is it for real?”

“What are your criteria for a ‘real’ girlfriend?” Jonny counters. “We go on dates. We sleep together. Pretty much exclusively for the last few months. Is that good enough for you?”

“I’m not  _judging,_ ” Pat protests, because he really isn’t, he’s just trying to understand. And he knew all this, already, because no fucking way was Lindsey sleeping in Jonny’s bed and not getting some of that, and he knows they spend plenty of time together. “But, Jonny, you still—last fucking night, even. You’re all, ‘yeah I’m totally gay but my girlfriend’s staying the night’, which, that doesn’t even make sense. And when you came out to me in rookie year, you said you were gay, and told Seabs you were just into guys, so don’t act like this isn’t fucking confusing for us.”

“So sorry about that,” Jonny says, dry.

“Don’t even, man, you told me to ask,” Pat snaps back.

“Yeah,” Jonny says, deflating a little. “Sorry. It’s just—I am gay? I’m definitely not straight.”

“Uh, what’s wrong with bi?” Pat says, waving a hand down his front.

“That’s never—Lindsey’s the only girl I’ve actually ever slept with. And it’s not—we’re not forever, we’re just having fun.”

“You’re the only dude I’ve ever slept with, too,” Pat points out. “Still okay with saying I’m bi. There’s not like, a threshold or something. And what do you mean,  _just having fun?_ ”

“I mean it’s not serious. She’s my girlfriend but I’m not in love with her, and she’s not wanting anything like that. It’s just—company? I guess. Yeah.”

“But you fuck her.”

Jonny makes a face, because he’s not a gentleman about  _Pat_  but he always is about women. Although maybe that’s because until recently, until Lindsey, he never actually had any to be impolite about.

“It’s not like it’s bad. Sex with her is good, okay? I’m not, like, lying there and thinking of England or anything.”

“So, bi,” Pat says, going to flip the bacon. “What’s so hard about that?”

“It’s…” Jonny trails off. “I’m not in love with her. I’m not—I’m not interested in women, like, romantically or whatever. Sex is fine, but I don’t think I could be in love with her.”

“Uh,” Pat says. “That—just means she isn’t like, the one for you? Or that you haven’t met a woman you could be in love with, yet?”

“It’s bigger than that.”

“How?”

“You get crushes on people, right? Like, fall for people, get infatuated or whatever and want to, like, be with them? Mostly girls, but guys too?”

“Yes…” Pat says hesitantly, hoping he doesn't have to actually name any of these dudes, because that is an embarrassing list of one. And maybe Sharpy in rookie year, which is probably more embarrassing but also, he's Sharpy. And if he was totally honest, there was Sam in juniors, and a couple guys whose company he enjoyed more than he should have on the USNTDP and in Detroit. But he never thought of those as crushes, before, never realized what he felt about them could be named, could be looked at straight on, until Jonny came out to him in training camp and said  _I hope you’re okay with sharing a room with me,_ steady and solid but waiting for the rejection Pat never would have given him.

“I’ve never felt that way about any girl. Lots of guys, since I was little, but I just don’t get that with women. I don’t think that’s gonna change. I just fall for guys.”

Pat remembers, sharply, the expression on Jonny’s face when Pat asked if he wanted to have been dating, before. He got it, then, that Jonny had been interested in him, but to think of it in terms of Jonny being infatuated or crushing on him, or—he freezes, spatula stilling in the runny eggs.

“Uh,” he says finally, clearing his throat and scraping at the overcooked layer of egg in the pan. “Then—then why are you even with her?”

“I’m not ready to come out.”

“Okay—“

“And it’s lonely, okay?” Jonny says, sounding defensive. “I haven’t actually dated anyone for like, more than a single date since college. And even in college it was only one guy more than…. You’re—I mean, fuck, Pat, you’re the guy I’ve had sex with for the longest, by like, a year.”

Jonny’s not looking at him, now, just gripping his mug and staring at it, tense like he’s worried what Pat’s going to come back with.

“Jesus, Tazer,” Pat breathes, moving the eggs off the heat and leaning across the counter until he can wrap a hand around one of Jonny’s wrists. “That’s—super shitty, man.”

Jonny wrenches his hands away, sloshing coffee onto the counter. “Don’t fucking pity me. That’s why—Lindsey’s fun, we get along awesome, it’s nice to have someone in my bed who isn’t a stranger, who I’m not going to worry is going to take pictures to Deadspin or some shit. It’s not forever but it’s working for now. For her, too, but that’s—that’s not your business.”

“Hey,” Pat says, still too gentle for Jonny to think it’s anything but pity, but, “I meant that the most sex you’ve had with the same person is me.”

That startles Jonny into a laugh. “Dude. I mean, it wasn’t  _that_ shitty, but I guess you weren’t exactly experienced.”

“Naw, I meant because your standards are gonna be so high everyone else will be a huge fucking disappointment,” Pat says, grinning. He’s joking, maybe, but he also thinks that after the first few, fumbling rounds, it was as good for Jonny as it was for him. Both of them get how to train hard, how to improve through sheer will, and no way were they going to continue having mediocre sex once it became clear they’d get to repeat it. He found that level of familiarity with Amanda, but it had never been anything like  _that_ , illicit and challenging and stolen and so, so hot.

Jonny snorts and swallows more coffee, hands looser around the mug, and Pat thinks maybe this conversation is going better than he could have hoped, before, even if it is at the expense of his confidence in his sexual prowess.

"You could come out," Pat says, because it's more true than saying Jonny could date without being outed. Pat's had enough bad experiences with the media to know that. "The team would be cool, and it's not like management would trade you for anything. Or that it would even make them want to."

Jonny’s mouth twists, and he rubs a thumb against his temple. “God, it would be—I  _know_  the guys would be okay, but I’m not, I’m not like, an unknown player.”

“No shit, captain of the defending champs,” Pat says, but he’s soft about it, leaning into the counter.

“Yeah, so. Maybe it’s better now, than when we started? It’s not  _not_  talked about anymore.”

“There’s You Can Play, and I guess Collins. But you’re, yeah,” Pat admits. He rubs the heel of his hand across the countertop, thoughtful. “But it’d go away. It’d just be a story, and it wouldn’t be a bad one. Better than, like, cab drivers and shit.”

Jonny doesn’t take the bait, lost in his own thoughts. “It would be a distraction, for me, for everyone.”

“We would fucking deal,” Pat says. “And it couldn’t be worse for you, than… whatever it is you’re doing now.”

Jonny shakes his head, fingers scratching behind his ear, and says, “Maybe if there’s somebody to be out for, but not… things are good now.”

Pat doesn’t see how that can be true, dating somebody he doesn’t love, can’t ever love, and whatever Jonny says (and however hot Lindsey is, because Pat  _is_ into girls and he’s not blind) the sex can’t be that good without wanting her, too.

“Who’re you gonna find if you aren’t out? It’s not like you can ask around for numbers or shit,” Pat argues, even though he knows he’s pushing. This isn’t his business, but Jonny—Jon doesn’t always do what’s right for him, spends too much time trying to make sure he’s right for everybody else first. Pat’s seen him put himself out of a game that way, seen him hit droughts and get discouraged and it never helps anybody in the end.

Jonny just shrugs and says, “Bacon’s burning.”

“Fuck,” Pat says, and goes to rescue brunch.

 

~

 

“What if,” Pat starts, licking bacon fat off of his fingers. “What if another guy came out? In the NHL, I mean.”

“It would make it easier, I guess,” Jonny admits. “But I don’t—I feel bad for thinking that, sometimes? Like, why should I expect somebody else to make it easier for me?”

“Works the other way, too,” Pat points out. “Why should you feel like you have to make it easier for other guys? You’re more famous than most players, that  _does_  make it harder.”

“But I’m also more—established?” Jonny says, chewing on his cheek. “I mean, I don’t have to worry about if my captain will back me up in the room, or if I’ll get another contract, or whatever. Maybe being a key player makes it a bigger deal, but it also means it’s not dangerous for me. I could make it easier for younger guys by doing it.”

Pat’s never thought about it that way, but—

“That’s all true for me, too,” he says. “I mean, I’m not the captain but it’s not like I don’t know I’d have your support.”

Jonny scoffs. “Yeah, no. You’re not gonna come out.”

“I could!” Pat says, bristling. “You’re not the only role model on this team. You’re not, like, the only guy in the league capable of setting a good example.”

“I  _know_  that,” Jonny says, rolling his eyes. “But you’re way more closeted than I am. I mean, have you even told your parents?”

Pat winces. He’s been able to imagine telling his team, his friends, even his sisters—but his parents? Pat thinks they’d get over it, eventually, because they love him and they’re good people, but he never got the  _we love you however you are_  speech he knows Jonny did; instead he heard his mom talking with church friends about how  _those people_  make her uncomfortable and his dad making off-colour remarks about the effeminate French-Canadian kid on his Detroit team.

“No, but—”

“And you’re not  _gay_ , you don’t  _have_  to, you can date girls and marry one and be happy, why would you do anything else?” Jonny says, leaning back in his chair and throwing out his arms. “It’d just make things more complicated for you.”

“But less for you,” Pat says, because that’s what they’re talking about here.

Jonny gapes.

“Okay, for one, you can’t come out for anybody but yourself.”

“Except the reasons you think you should aren’t for  _you_ , they’re for what it might do for other players,” Pat points out. “This is the same thing.”

“It’s  _not_ , but okay,” Jonny continues. “ _Two_ , controlling a narrative about being bi would be so much harder.”

“People would figure it out,” Pat mutters, but—maybe that’s optimistic.

“And three,” Jonny says right over him, holding up three fingers in emphasis. “It might make it easier for other guys, but holy shit, Pat. I couldn’t come out if you did! Do you know what they’d say about the Hawks? Do you realize what people would assume about  _us_?”

“Oh.”

Jonny makes a disapproving sound and pushes away from the table.

“Yeah. And we couldn’t even tell them they’re wrong, because we did fuck. So please, don’t think you’d be doing me any favours.”

It’s Pat’s turn to tense up.

“I’m not gonna—if I date a guy, I’m going to come out, alright? And you’ll just have to deal.”

“I’m not saying you  _can’t_.”

“Yes you are! You just did!”

“I—Jesus Christ,” Jonny says. “Why are you so sure—why would you even want to?”

Pat rescues the last piece of bacon from his plate before Jonny yanks it away from him, and crunches it between his teeth.

“God, I couldn’t split my life up like that. I’m not saying I love the idea of telling my folks, or everybody else, but it’d be worse to hide a, a person that important to me from them.” He shoots Jonny a crooked sort of grin. “You know me, man. I couldn’t keep that shit on the down-low.”

Jonny still looks pissed, which isn’t fair at all, it’s not as if he has the NHL monopoly on dealing with trying to play in this league and not be as straight as every other guy seems to be. If anything, he should be happy Pat thinks about this too, knowing he’s not alone. He’s not wrong, that two out players on the same freaking team would invite less-than-flattering (but also totally accurate, in their case) speculation, but Pat’s not talking about doing it on his own, here.

“Hey, chill, man,” he says, standing up and prying his plate out of Jonny’s still hands. “If I magically end up with a boyfriend, that will be the story, not if you and I ever hooked up.”

That gets a tight, miserable nod out of Jonny, which Pat decides is as successful as this conversation is going to be. He grabs his glass and heads round to the dishwasher.

“C’mon, let’s put this shit away and go find me some sick duds.”

 

~

 

**January 23rd, 2014**

_Chicago Blackhawks lose 2-1 to the Minnesota Wild._

 

~

 

Friday after practice Sharpy drags Pat home for lunch and hanging with his girls. Pat has absolutely no objection to this, and ends up sprawled comfortably on one of Sharpy’s ginormous couches watching Mulan with his daughters. Well, actually, it’s now just the two of them watching Mulan, because Abby’s put Maddie down for her nap, and Sadie’s conked right out on Pat’s chest.

“You are not allowed to move, Kaner,” Sharpy says from the other couch, eyes closed. “Both of them asleep at the same time is a miracle, we can’t jinx it.”

“M’comfy,” Pat says, rubbing one thumb gently along Sadie’s back. She’s drooling all over; it’s pretty much the cutest thing he’s ever seen. “And she’s totally out, man.”

“Awesome,” Sharpy says, yawning and twisting to look at them. “So. Tell me stuff.”

“Stuff?” Pat says warily. Sharpy’s yawn has morphed into a distressingly focused look.

“Yeah,  _stuff_. You’ve been thinking too much recently. I wanna know what about.”

“Thinking too much?” Pat asks, skeptical. Sharpy definitely enlisted Sadie in this ambush. He’s trapped. By a  _baby._

“Woolgathering, worrying, contemplating, fretting—pick one of the above.”

“Uh. I’m fine?”

“Your girlfriend of over a year dumps you for—as far as I can tell—no real reason, your team goes on a series of losing streaks, and you give up goal-scoring lead on the team to a beautiful, beautiful man, all in the same month, and you’re  _fine?_ ”

“Well, when you put it like that,” Pat says, rolling his eyes. “And technically, she dumped me in December.”

“Counting by days here, Peeks. Come on, spill.”

Pat makes a face, and says, “Okay, okay, just—give me a minute,” to shut up Sharpy’s continued prodding.

He curves a hand around Sadie and shifts his hips until he can pull his phone out of his pocket.

_is it ok if I come out to sharpy_

Jonny is never more than a foot away from his phone, if he isn’t on the ice, so it’s hardly thirty seconds before he gets back:

_you need my permission ?_

and,

_or am i the evidence again_

Pat cringes. That really wasn’t his best choice of words. But Jonny’s also not wrong, although it’s more that Pat figures Sharpy will be persistent, perceptive, or his usually freaky combination of both where Pat’s concerned, and get it out of him.

 _Sorry_ , he sends, and then _you know what he’s like._

Pat gets back a  _whatever_  and  _he’ll be an asshole but it’s not like he isn’t already_  and that’s as much blessing as Pat’s going to get. He drops the phone between the couch cushions and says, “So I’m bisexual.” Pat’s always figured that once you’ve decided to do something, there’s no point in wondering how wrong it could go.

“What,” Sharpy says, sitting up abruptly, and Pat grins. It’s not every day you get to surprise Patrick Sharp.

“I’m into dudes. And girls. But guys, too.”

Sharpy’s eyebrows have disappeared into his (luxurious, Pat hates him) hair.

“I—wow.” Sharpy noticeably shakes himself, and then adds, “I’m kind of overcome here, Peekaboo.”

Pat looks down at the top of Sadie’s head and traces her tiny ear with his index finger. “It’s not a big deal, I just wanted to tell you.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Sharpy says gently. “Not to me. But it can be, to you. That’s gotta be something to work through.”

Pat shifts a shoulder in as best an approximation of a shrug as he can make without dislodging Sadie. “It’s worked through, pretty much.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, man,” Pat says, grin lopsided. “Years ago.”

“How worked through… is worked through?” Sharpy asks, uncertain.

Pat waggles his eyebrows. “ _Extensively_  worked through.”

Sharpy looks horrified, but Pat’s pretty sure it has nothing to do with the pronouncement itself, so much as—

“How the  _hell_  did I now know about this?” Sharpy leans forward, elbows on his knees. “You’ve never—I thought we—I mean…” Sharpy trails off, and looks so genuinely distressed that Pat feels awful.

Pat sighs. Of all the ways he thought Sharpy would get this out of him, an honest guilt-trip was pretty low on the list.

“I wasn’t hiding being bi,” Pat admits, poking Sadie’s tiny fist with his fingertip. “I was hiding—who.”

“Who.” Sharpy looks at him blankly, but Sharpy is fucking  _smart_  and it takes him less than five seconds to—

“Holy  _shit_.”

“Shhhh,” Pat says, cupping a hand over Sadie’s turned-up ear. Babies are the best, but he’s been around screaming babies enough to know that they are also the worst.

“ _Holy shit_ ,” Sharpy repeats in a whisper. “You and  _Tazer._ ”

Pat gives his assent with a grimace.

“Holy shit.” Sharpy falls back into the couch. “That’s crazy, Peeks. But you said—years ago?”

“Uhuh. Started after the first cup, stopped—”

“After his concussion?”

“Yeah,” Pat agrees. “How’d you guess?”

“You two were pretty weird about all of that, and then everything after,” Sharpy says with a handwave that implies playoff-loss meltdowns and cars driving into posts. “But more than you should have been for how stupid you both were.”

“Hey,” Pat says mildly, but they were pretty stupid.

“No wonder, though, if you were getting over a breakup from your  _teammate_.”

“I wasn’t!” Pat objects. “It wasn’t a breakup, we weren’t  _together_ , we just—you know.”

“You were  _just_ ,” Sharpy says flatly, giving him a skeptical look. “Patrick, Tazer could never  _just_  anything about you.”

“Ugh,” Pat says, staring up at the ceiling. “Yeah, well, I didn’t know that at the time.”

“Are you  _blind_?” Sharpy says, eyes wide. “That kid has been crazy about you since rookie training camp—Seabs used to complain about how he was all  _Kaner this_  and  _Kaner that_  until he wore himself out every evening.”

“Well, I didn’t know,” Pat says shortly. He feels stupid for having missed it all these years, sure, but it wasn’t his fault. “He hid it—from me, at least—pretty fucking good. I mean, I didn’t even think, he never…” Pat trails off, frowning down at Sadie’s head. She’s stirring a little, hands grasping at the folds of his shirt. He wraps a hand around her bum and carefully sits up, leaning back so she’s still tucked to his chest.

“Hey,” Sharpy says, coming over and sitting next to him. “Sorry, kid. If you want to talk about it, that’s cool, but it’s your business.”

“Not a kid,” Pat mutters. He’s twenty-fucking-five, he should have this shit worked out by now. He shouldn’t need to go running to Sharpy or his mom or Erica when shit gets confusing. These conversations with Jonny, they’re nothing they could have had when they were younger; admitting some of this stuff out loud feels like the most grown-up thing Pat’s ever done. He just wishes he understood it all, too.

“I know you’re not,” Sharpy says, and Pat catches the fond grin down at his daughter. Maybe at Pat, too—Sharpy’s never been shy about how much he likes Pat, and Pat’s always returned the favour. It’s his best and easiest friendship. If you’d told his 18-year-old, barely-drafted self that his favourite people in Chicago would be a soppily in-love married couple, five years his senior, and their baby girls, he would have boggled.

“We’ve been talking about it, a bit,” Pat admits after a minute of silence. “He’s fucking confusing, you know? He tried to explain it, but it made no fucking sense.”

“Tried to explain?”

“Why he, like, held himself back? I mean, I get— _now—_ that he was, interested, whatever,” Pat manages, flushing a little and resolutely not looking over at Sharpy’s expression. “But he made it sound like it was my fault, like I had too many friends and didn’t want to be his friend.”

He risks a glance at Sharpy, who—unusually—isn’t laughing at him, but has a thoughtful look across his face. “What is it?” Pat asks, curious.

Sharpy tilts his head, saying “I don’t know. I think the thing you’ve got to realize about Tazer is he’s way more insecure—about things that aren’t hockey, at least—than he lets on. He’s not like guys like us. We’re not  _shy_ , we don’t waste a lot of time worrying about who likes us and who doesn’t and who wants to hang out. But Jonny, he’s self-aware enough to know he’s not everybody’s cup of tea, and he worries about it.”

“Worries about it  _how_?” Pat asks, confused. Sure, Jonny was quiet and awkward and in their first year, often had to be cajoled out for drinks and then out of his shell, but Pat had always assumed that was his focus on hockey, not fear of, of rejection. It’s  _hockey_ : guys are weird and intense and over-the-top and not exactly socially graceful.

“That he’s overstaying his welcome?” Sharpy says with a shrug. “Sorry Peeks, I think it’s crazy too. Why do you think I mock him so much?”

“Because it’s hilarious?”

“Well,  _yeah_ ,” Sharpy says, grin shit-eating and brilliant. “But also so he  _knows_  that I think he’s the bestest baby captain the Hawks ever could ask for. Pigtail-pulling love so he can’t go off thinking I don’t want him around.”

And that… it works, is the thing. Jonny’s easiest around the guys who rile him up the worst, which has never made sense to Pat but has always been true. And Pat’s done his share, but almost only ever about hockey, because it had never seemed right to go after Jonny anywhere else. It never occurred to him that Jonny might see that as disinterest, instead of what it was, for Pat—respect.

“This is messed up,” Pat mutters, sitting up as Sadie starts squirming in his arms.

“Well, it’s you and Jon,” Sharpy says, sliding his hands under his daughter and lifting her off of Pat. “Pretty sure expecting more would be wishful thinking.”

 

~

 

**January 26th, 2014**

_Chicago Blackhawks lose 3-1 to the Winnipeg Jets._

 

~

 

Pat follows Jonny out to his car, both of them quiet and stewing after the loss to the Jets. The fucking  _Jets,_  man, and Pat knows any team can win on any given night, and that Winnipeg’s been getting it together lately, but it still feels like they should have had this one. That’s been their luck, since the new year, and it’s piling on to Pat’s general sense that things are unsettled. The fall had been  _so good,_ with his game and things feeling steady with Amanda, and now—it feels like all he’s getting is glove and post.

Pat’s half-expecting to have to remind Jonny that he’d given him a ride in today, because after a loss he’s usually lost enough in his head to forget trivial details like that, but he doesn’t say anything as Pat slides into the passenger seat. The drive home is mostly silent, too, save for the low hum of whatever talk radio station Jonny’s got set in the background (not sports, even Jonny isn’t that self-flagellating), but when they get close to Pat’s apartment, he breaks in.

“Come up.”

Jonny twists his head towards Pat, frown that hasn’t budged since halfway through the third period deepening. “What?”

“Come up, let’s talk it out,” Pat offers. “You’re just gonna pace around your apartment til two in the morning anyway.”

Jonny looks back at the road, mouth twisting as he chews on the inside of his cheek.

“Or we’ll blow up some zombies or something,” Pat adds. “Whatever. Misery loves company and all that. You can crash here.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jonny says. He’s back to quiet while he pulls up to Pat’s garage, keying in the code and parking next to the Hummer, but speaks again one he’s turned off the ignition. “Sure you really want to keep me company right now? I’m pretty fucking pissed.”

Pat shrugs. “Not at me.”

“No?” Jonny asks, a little dark, but Pat’s not buying it. He knows what Jonny’s like when he’s mad at him, and it involves a whole lot less silence.

“Nope.”

Jonny stares at him, steady, for an awkwardly long moment, like he’s looking for something. He nods, once, and then climbs out of the car.

Once up in the apartment, Jonny tosses him a Gatorade and grabs one for himself before heading for the couch and turning the TV on to—yep, hockey highlights. Pat rolls his eyes and takes back what he thought before about Jonny not being cruel to himself, but parks himself next to him on the couch.

“Even Hoss—”

“Didn’t lose us the game,” Jonny finishes.

“I know,” Pat says, kicking Jonny’s ankle. “I was gonna say, even Hoss has been getting frustrated with this. He’s taken more stupid penalties than you, lately.”

“I don’t take stupid penalties.”

“Don’t make me pull up game five, Mr. ‘I can’t control my stick when angry’.”

“Fuck off,” Jonny says. “The lines are fucked.”

“Yeah.”

“We still need a fucking two-C.”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t believe Q benched Bicks.”

“Yup.”

“Are you just gonna agree with everything I say?”

“If you keep saying obvious things, yes.”

Jonny kicks him back, for that, and sinks further into the couch. “You’re getting—Saad works, for you, but you can’t play with him and Shawzy together.”

“Sure I can,” Pat says, shrugging but he can’t help but feel tense about it. He’s been bumped around his whole career at the Hawks, except the stretches where he and Jonny made everything work too well to be split up. “They crash the net, more than Zeus. I should be able to make it work.”

“It’s a team fucking sport, Kaner, it doesn’t matter how good you are if the lines don’t work. You’re getting shut down and they aren’t able to keep it open enough to stop their D from smothering you every step.”

“Then I need to stop letting them shut me down,” Pat says. “It’s not—it’s not Shawzy, he’s doing fine.”

“Fine isn’t good enough. You should be top-line, Shawzy’s a checker, not a finesse guy. He can’t read your plays the way he needs to.”

Jonny sounds almost grudging, there, and Pat sits up a little straighter. “Wait—do you think I’m like, thinking I’m demoted or some shit?”

Jonny freezes for a moment, bottle halfway to his mouth. “N-no? But you’re not on…” Jonny trails off, flushing a little. “Pat, you’re—”

“Not on  _your_  line, so what, I should feel like I’m bumped down by Q as punishment? I was  _second in the league in points_  without being on your line. Way to be self-centered, captain,” Pat says, feeling snarky but not actually pissed. He tried to throw Jonny a grin to convey it, but Jonny’s got a hand rubbing across his eyes.

“I know you don’t need me to do this, Pat,  _really_. You haven’t ever. And it’s not as if we’ve been fucking lighting it up on the PP lately, it’s just…” Jonny tightens his mouth, looking absolutely  _miserable._

Pat wants to reach out and wrap an arm around his shoulders, because Jonny shouldn’t ever look  _this_  upset after a loss. It’s been years since he’s looked like he’s thinking he’s failed God, team and country after a bad regular season loss, and Pat feels thrown by it.

“Hey man,” he tries. “I’m good. Like, I’m pissed about the loss, I wanna find ways to contribute again, all that, but I’m not like, angry about how Joel’s got me lined up. It's always been this way, and I've always had to find ways to make it work."

"I know," Jonny says, sounding frustrated. "I just hate that—any other team, the number one center and the number one wing, they should be the number one fucking line. Q's wrong thinking I can't center you because we're both playmakers—look at the Boston series, for fuck's sake."

"Yeah," Pat says, feelingly. He'd kill to get Jonny as a centre again, no shit. Maybe they fought like crazy over the other guy being too greedy, too slow to pass, but they've both evolved so much since their first few seasons. Jonny's never played more down low, more in front of the net, and Pat wants to see what they could do this season with his own shot finally making a difference. "Well, maybe if we lose another couple..."

"Don't you fucking dare say that," Jonny says, but he catches the teasing in Pat's tone and it isn't heated.

They finish rehydrating in silence, Pat mentally reorganizing the lines over and over again until he can see it working. Jonny's probably doing the same, but comparing notes would be stupid; they never agree on the role of the third.

"You know what always made these losses better?" Pat says as he puts down the empty Gatorade bottle.

"What?"

"Blow jobs."

Jonny laughs, which is probably better than him taking Pat seriously, Pat thinks. "You offering?"

"I liked it," Pat says, shrugging. He should say  _no, of course not,_  but he wants to  _know,_  finds himself unable to lie.

"Who doesn't like blow jobs?"

"I mean, giving them," Pat clarifies. “Sucking you off. The other way was good, too, though.”

Jonny shifts a little, turning against the arm of the couch and pulling up a knee. Pat bites his tongue to keep from grinning; Jonny isn't subtle at all.

"Well, no big surprises there. You've got an oral fixation that's obvious from space."

Pat gives in and flicks him a teasing grin, wetting his lower lip with his tongue before pulling it in to bite down gently.

"Asshole," Jonny says, looking up at the ceiling. "This how it's going to be now that we've broken the seal? You all okay with the gay shit now, you're just gonna be a cocktease about it?"

"Anything to fuck with you, man, you know how it is," Pat answers, instead of the  _it's not teasing if I put out_ that flicks through his head first.

"Or maybe you’re just desperate for me to fuck you," Jonny shoots back, grin easy. He kicks at Pat's hip.

"Why didn't you?" Pat blurts out.

"Why didn't I—”

"Fuck me. Like, for real." Pat shifts a little in his seat, skin feeling hot and itchy under his dress shirt.

“I—what,” Jonny says, looking flustered.

“You’ve done it, right?” Pat says, because he wants to push this, wants to—know, but also he knows he’s winding Jonny up. It’s good, knowing he can still turn Jonny on, and he wants to see how far that goes, reckless as it feels.

“Yeaaaaah,” Jonny says, slowly, like he isn’t sure where this is going, isn’t sure he wants to find out.

“So were you just not into it, like, with me? You never asked.”

“ _You_  never asked.”

“C’mon,” Pat says, impatient. “I was always following your lead, don’t front.”

It’s true; it was Jonny who first pushed him down and said  _c’mon, take it_ , not Pat who fell to his knees to ask for it, no matter how much he thought of it beforehand. For all Jonny apparently hid what he really wanted, he was the one to take the lead in bed. Pat was too fumbling and embarrassed at his own inexperience to suggest anything beyond what Jonny brought up, at first, and by the time he was used to the deal, it felt too weird to rock the boat.

“I know,” Jonny says, bringing a hand up to scrub through his hair, the way he always does when looking for the right words in an uncomfortable situation. That’s the thing with Pat having watched Jonny give as many interviews as he has—Pat knows every tell. “But that was different. I didn’t want to assume you wanted that.”

“So shoving your dick in my mouth was somehow different from shoving it—”

“Fuck off,” Jonny cuts him off, loud and turning a pretty awesome shade of red. “It wouldn’t have been—I couldn’t have done that and kept it just buddies, okay?”

“And if I’d asked?”

“You didn’t,” Jonny says shortly. “Fuck off, like you even thought of it. You’re not even gay.”

“I did!” Pat says, annoyed at Jonny’s… categorizing of him, like just cause he likes girls, he can’t want  _that_. “I’ve thought about it. Like, a lot.”

“Yeah, well—” Jonny starts hotly, but he cuts himself off and shuts his mouth tightly. Pat watches him out of the corner of his eye, and stretches his legs out in front of him until they’re kicking at the base of the coffee table. “I didn’t know,” Jonny finally says, and Pat can tell he’s trying for like, captainly support or something insane like that, based on the flatness of the tone.

Pat shrugs, sliding down a little and pressing the ball of his socked foot against the edge of the coffee table, something solid to push back against.

“I mean, when we were—like, I thought about it  _kind of_ , but more after. I guess I always figured we would, sometime? And then after when we hadn’t _,_  I sort of, I dunno. Thought about it more.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” Pat tilts his head back on the couch. “I dunno. It seems—I just keep wanting to know, you know? What it’s like.”

“So you haven’t—”

“Fuck man, with who?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You  _guess,_ ” Pat mocks Jonny, echoing his flat Canadian vowels, throat a little dry and it comes out huskier than he intends. He’s warm all through, partly embarrassed to be saying this out loud and partly a little turned on, blood thrumming with the thought of being fucked. Pat’s fingered himself, a little, thought about getting something longer, easier to manoeuver, but he doesn’t think that’s what gets him  _wanting_. He wants to know what it’s like to give it over to somebody, let them surround him and take him and use him until he’s—fuck. Pat coughs to clear his throat and looks over at Jonny, who’s watching him with hooded eyes.

“Have you, you know. Done it both ways?”

“Yes.”

“Did you like it? Taking it, I mean. Or I guess, both, but…” Pat trails off, tilting his head to say  _who wouldn’t like that part?_

Jonny looks away from him, up over his head. He’s still got one leg pulled up, the other foot on the floor. The fingers of one hand are drawing little circles on his kneecap.

“Sort of?” Jonny says after a moment. “There were things I liked, I guess, but not—there was stuff that didn’t work for me.”

“Like what?”

“Like what worked, or what didn’t?” Jonny asks, dropping his eyes back to Pat’s.

Pat’s honestly willing to take whatever Jonny’s willing to give.

“Whichever. Both.” He grins lopsidedly at Jonny, rubbing his thumb into his hip. “I’m living vicariously through you here, bro.”

Jonny’s mouth twitches at ‘bro’, but he doesn’t object out loud. He pulls his hand off his knee and rubs his knuckles into the muscle of his jaw, instead, before saying, “It felt really good, I guess, objectively? I liked the feeling of it, I think.”

“You aren’t sure?”

“It was only a couple times, with this one guy.”

“In college?”

“Yeah. And…” Jonny trails off, looking—not embarrassed, because this whole conversation has been that low-level of awkward Pat’s come to expect from their serious conversations lately, but more  _worried_ , like he’s concerned about how Pat’s going to react.

“Hey,” Pat says, reaching out to grasp Jonny’s ankle, the only part of Jonny he can reach without tipping over. “I’m not gonna say anything.”

“You always say something,” Jonny grumbles, but the tension drains out a little. “I guess I felt really overwhelmed by it? Yeah. I didn’t actually know him that well, and I was pretty drunk both times—”

“Woah,” Pat interrupts, fingers tightening around Jonny’s ankle. “Are you saying—”

“ _No,_ ” Jonny says sharply. “No, I wasn’t that—I knew what I was doing. But it was just—it was more intimate than I was expecting, I guess. Sex always is a bit, you’re letting someone see parts of you they don’t usually? But I guess I felt kind of out of control, and that wasn’t so good.”

“Huh,” Pat says, not willing to let silence make Jonny worry about what he’s thinking. He’s fantasized about guys he doesn’t know fucking him, but maybe it’d be too much, in practice. Or maybe he’d like being out of control, like that. He’s always been quicker to trust than Jonny, faster to let things go. “That makes sense.”

“Yeah. I think I’d like it more—like, probably a lot—with somebody I was really into.”

“A lot, huh?” Pat says, chewing on his lip.

“Maybe. I mean, I’m pretty into like, fingers and stuff.”

“Really?” Pat asks, curious. They stuck to standard buddyfucking stuff, hand jobs and blow jobs and some really intense rubbing off, especially when they’d started and everything had been jacked up to eleven. Jonny never pushed past his balls, and it hadn’t occurred to Pat to be the one to try. “Doesn’t do much for me.”

“It’s, uh, different when they aren’t your own.”

“Yeah?” Pat asks, and fuck, his voice sounds shot again. He flexes his foot against the table, the stretch feeling good, letting go of some of the tension in his legs.

“Yeah. Better angle, I guess, and it’s just—always better when you aren’t doing it to yourself.”

“Like jerking off.”

“Right,” Jonny says. He’s hoarse too, now, and when Pat watches his eyes he can see them drift from Pat’s mouth down to his legs where he’s got them sprawled out. Pat’s not hiding it, not like Jonny, and he knows Jonny can see where his dick is pressing against the tight pull of his slacks, caught against his thigh. Pat drops a hand to his leg, watching Jonny’s gaze flick from his dick to his hand and then back up to his face. His eyes are  _black_ , shit, and it’s hard for Pat not to let his hand slip down to cup himself and press.

“Fucker,” Jonny breathes. “I thought this was supposed to be talking through the game, not you…”

“Not me what?”

“Being, you know what.”

“I was just curious,” Pat says, mild but unable to stop his lip from curling up.

“Fuck you, you know what you’re doing.”

Pat laughs out loud at that, and at the look of absolute frustration on Jonny’s face.

“Hey, I’m helping. Jerk-off fodder plus a guest room, at your service. You sleep like a log after you get off, even after a stupid game. Just strip the sheets in the morning, kay?”

“Ugh,” Jonny says, stretching out his cocked leg to kick Pat in the side. “I hate you.”

“Current evidence suggests otherwise,” Pat says, waggling his eyebrows and letting his gaze drop pointedly to Jonny’s crotch. Jonny isn’t tucked down like him, he must have adjusted when Pat wasn’t looking, because his erection is pressed sideways across his hip. He can see it twitch against the soft grey fabric. Pat swallows against the sudden rush of saliva in his mouth. It’s been so fucking long, and he wants to lean down and mouth the wool until it’s dark with spit.

“Fuck,” he hears Jonny say, pulse rushing loudly in Pat’s ears. “Shit, we shouldn’t.”

“C’mon,” Pat says, wanting to—wanting it because he misses it, has been missing it worse since they started talking about it, again, or really for the first time. And part of him wants to show Jonny what _he’s_  missing, not fucking guys, not fucking around with people he’s actually interested in, even if he’s moved on from wanting Pat specifically. “I want it. So do you.”

“Doesn’t make it a good idea,” Jonny says, but he hasn’t moved from where he’s sprawled in the corner of the couch, dick hard and eyes dark.

“This isn’t like last time,” Pat argues, pulling himself up to his knees until he’s facing Jonny. “Nothing’s going to fall apart.”

Jonny’s hand clenches where he’s gripping the couch. Pat is sure he’s going to stand up and walk away, but instead he lets go and holds his hand out, fingers curving in in a wordless request. Pat shuffles forward a little, still uncertain of whether or not Jonny’s giving him the go. As soon as he gets within arm’s reach, though, Jonny just slides his hand around Pat’s jaw and presses his thumb to Pat’s mouth.

“Fuuuuck,” Jonny groans, low, as Pat opens at the pressure, tongue darting out to lick at the pad of Jonny’s thumb. Jonny lets him for a moment, and then pushes inside, firm and demanding and  _god_ , Pat has  _missed_  this. He doesn’t look away from Jonny as he licks and sucks and scrapes his teeth, pressing into the splay of Jonny’s fingers against his jaw to try and say  _you can take this, I want you to._

Jonny does. He watches as Pat licks from his thumb to the web of his fingers, lets Pat take two of his huge fingers in together, gasps when Pat slides his tongue down and sucks hard. His other hand drifts up and strokes along Pat’s jawline, touches his wet lower lip, draws down his neck and then drops to his own fly. Pat twists around Jonny’s fingers to watch as Jonny fumbles with his zipper—no belt, thank god for tailored pants—and tugs his cock out.

Pat gasps for air when Jonny tugs his fingers out of his mouth. Jonny slides them wetly around his neck to tangle in the curls at the base of Pat’s skull before pulling insistently.

“Suck,” Jonny says, rough and gorgeous.

Pat shudders and does, forearms braced on Jonny’s enormous, spread thighs. Jonny holds his cock up, because he’s a gentleman like that, but when Pat pushes down as hard as he can without choking, Jonny rubs his fingers along the slick, stretched skin of Pat’s lips. Pat moans, dizzy, and shifts his balance so he can get a hand on himself.

Jonny doesn’t say much—he never did, but now Pat wonders if this is him holding back. If he was less worried about saying too much, what he would have said. Still, Pat doesn’t need instructions. He perfected this, figured out the exact tempo and pressure and slide of his tongue to push Jonny over the edge. He hasn’t forgotten, and when Jonny comes, Pat’s cock leaps in hand as Jonny pushes him down to swallow. He doesn’t want to come, wants to see if Jonny will want to get in on it first, so Pat just grips himself gently while he licks Jonny clean.

“Jesus,” Jonny says, gasping. “Fuck, get your pants off.”

Pat doesn’t see why he needs to get naked to get off, but he learned years ago to listen to Jonny in these moments. He strips off his pants and, at Jonny’s raised eyebrows, his boxers, before kneeling back onto the couch. Pat lets Jonny pull him up and manhandle him until he’s straddling the leg Jonny’s got stretched down the couch. He takes himself back in hand as Jonny unbuttons his own dress shirt and pulls it open.

“Gah,” Pat says, head tipping down to knock Jonny’s. “You’re so— _fuck.”_

Jonny slides wide, callused palms up his thighs and over his hips, gripping briefly and then sliding them around to Pat’s ass. Pat lets out a low moan, hips twisting as Jonny squeezes hard.

“You think about getting fucked, huh, Pat?”

“Y-yeah,” Pat stutters, thumb sliding through the slick well of precome on his dick. “Want to—wanna feel it.”

“You don’t even care who it is, do you?” Jonny asks, voice deep and not a little condescending. “You just want somebody to fucking pound you, want to feel  _taken_.” He slides one of his hands back to push at Pat’s balls where they’re pulled up tight, and then drags his fingers from there to Pat’s hole.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Pat chants, bracing himself on Jonny’s shoulder. Jonny strokes a finger once, twice, and then just  _presses_. Pat lets out a low, shocked sound and comes all over Jonny’s bare stomach.

Pat sinks back onto his heels, game-sore legs suddenly giving out as he comes down from it. Pat shivers at the drag of Jonny’s hands as they loosen and slide up to his hips. Jonny rubs firmly across the muscles that form a vee down from Pat’s abs, and then lets go, one hand dropping low on his stomach to keep Pat’s jizz from dripping down to his pants.

Pat huffs out a breath that’s somewhere between aroused and amused, and says, “Yeah, let me.” He swings off the couch to stand on shaky legs and haul on boxers before stumbling to the bathroom. When he gets back with a wad of toilet paper and a damp washcloth, Jonny’s got both feet on the floor and has tucked himself back in. He doesn’t meet Pat’s eyes as he mops up the mess.

Pat doesn’t know how this is going to go, but he knows he doesn’t want this to have fucked everything up.  _Again_. He’s too tired, too worn from the loss and the creeping lethargy of a good orgasm to poke at it now.

“Guest bed made up?” Jonny asks, standing up and steadying Pat where he’s listing a little.

“Yeah,” Pat says, trying for a half smile. Jonny meets it with a rueful one of his own, and knocks his fist against Pat’s shoulder before stepping away.

Not fucked up, then. Not yet. This time, Pat promises himself, he won’t be so fucking blind he misses it until it’s too late.

 

~

 

In the morning, Jonny is still there. Pat doesn’t know why he’s quite so shocked about this. Sure, Jonny was usually the first to make sure they went their separate ways post-whatever, but this time is  _different_. This time, they’re friends, and not—pretending this is simple enough to be ignored.

Pat pours himself a cup of coffee and sits down next to Jonny at the island. It’s awkwardly close, but he’s not going to run away from this if Jonny hasn’t. Jonny’s in a borrowed t-shirt and boxers and seems content to let Pat break the silence. He drinks half his mug down, watching as Jonny methodically works on an apple with a paring knife, slicing off thin pieces and eating them off the blade.

“I’m sorry,” Pat says, finally. “That was a stupid of me—I shouldn’t have—”

Jonny snorts. “Please don’t say  _tempted me_  or something.”

“Well, I was kind of working you up,” Pat admits. “On purpose, too, I guess.”

“Patrick,” Jonny says, rolling his neck until it cracks. “You’re not fucking  _irresistible_. I could have shut it down. I didn’t.”

“So we’re both idiots, then,” Pat says, an offer, light as he can make it.

“I don’t know,” Jonny says, sounding thoughtful.

“Wha—you don’t  _know_?” Pat asks, bewildered. “I thought—I thought for sure you’d say it was a mistake. You said—”  _you wouldn’t do this again._

“It’s not the same,” Jonny says. “I’m not—we can talk about this now, right?”

“Pretty sure that’s what got us here,” Pat says, mullish. “Me running my mouth.”

“About wanting somebody to fuck you.”

Pat chokes on his coffee and has to set it down. “Dude,” he says weakly.

“Were you lying?” Jonny demands, putting down the knife and apple core and turning on him. “Was that just to, what,  _work me up_?”

“No!” Pat half-shouts. “ _No_. I’m not that much of an asshole, fuck.”

Jonny stares at him for a long moment, as if assessing the truth of it. Pat holds his gaze, cheeks warm, and adds, “I do, it is something. That I want, I just.” He shrugs.

“I could.”

Pat is really glad he put his coffee down.

“You could…” he trails off, faintly.

Jonny sighs, like Pat is just too stupid for words. “You want to try it, but like you said, with who? You can’t risk a stranger, and even if you could, that’s not…” he trails off, giving a one-armed shrug.

Pat gets it, halfway: that’s what Jonny didn’t like with a guy he barely knew, and he, apparently, doesn’t want that for Pat. Jesus Christ.

“You’re offering to fuck me.”

“Yes.”

“So I can see what it’s like.”

“Yeah.”

“Because you don’t want me trying to pick up a stranger? Because that would probably be like, scary and shitty and possibly career-destroying?”

“It wouldn’t destroy your career,” Jonny objects, and then catches himself. “But, basically, yes.”

“That’s—aren’t you taking your captain’s duties a little far here? What would you even get out of it?”

Nope, that’s the face Jonny makes when he actually thinks Pat is too stupid for words. And is also totally embarrassed about it. Pat can’t hold back a grin.

“You think I’m hot.”

“You think I banged somebody I thought was ugly for a year and a half?”

He sounds disgusted. Probably with himself, because he’s the best like that. Pat feels kind of giddy. And confused. And turned-on. Which is weird because he’s also hungry and that’s never worked well together, for him, so add nauseous to the list of ‘too many things for Pat to be feeling at once’.

“Look,” Jonny continues. “Don’t say yes. Or no. Just—think about it, okay? I don’t want to fuck things up, again, so if it’s not cool, that’s fine.”

He stands up, clapping Pat on the shoulder. “I’ve got to get home, I’ll see you at practice.”

“Yeah man,” Pat manages.

Jonny leaves his sticky apple core sitting on the counter and Pat sitting dumbly on his stool, feeling like everything’s suddenly gotten turned around on him.

 

~

 

**January 28th, 2014**

_Chicago Blackhawks lose in OT, 5-4 to the Calgary Flames._

 

~

 

Pat thinks about it. Shit, for the first couple of days, right up to their game against Vancouver, he can’t think of anything else. It’s distracting, and embarrassing, especially because he knows Jonny can tell he’s not making eye contact for fear of going bright red. It’s just—he knows what it’s like to have all of Jonny’s attention, to be the target for all of his focus and drive, and Pat can’t help but imagine what it would be like with Jonny opening him up, stretching him out and driving in. Even if they just jerked each other off, Jonny had done it with an intensity that had left Pat gasping from more than just the sensation of it. It made it all the more jarring when Jonny would turn it off after and step right out of Pat’s space.

The only thing he actually manages to say to Jonny outside of hockey-related communication, on the bus ride to the airport after the frustrating loss to Calgary, is “What about Lindsey?”

“What about her?” Jonny asks, looking as pissed and exhausted as Pat feels. It’s a shitty time to be bringing it up, but Pat’s too confused to care.

“If we, y’know. Would she care? Would you still, like…” Pat trails off, awkward. He’s not going to ask the guy to break up with his girlfriend just for this or anything, but it feels so off.

“I think she’ll be fine with it.”

“You  _think_? You haven’t told her?”

“About what I suggested, or about Sunday?”

“Either. Both.”

“She knows about Sunday,” Jonny admits, looking apprehensive. Pat figures that’s because he knows Pat is out to all of two other people—and now, apparently, Lindsey—but he’s not exactly in a position to cast stones, here. And if she’s keeping Jonny’s secret, she’ll keep Pat’s. “But not the other—if it, if we do, then yes. I’ll tell her.”

“Oh.” Pat flops back in the seat. That’s—yeah. Confirmation, of sorts, Pat supposes. If he’d thought Jonny meant to offer anything other than what he said, he couldn’t anymore.

“Hey, it’s really—” Jonny breaks off, and knocks Pat on the knee with his fist. “Forget about it if it’s not what you want. Seriously. We’re friends, either way.”

Pat laughs, low and tired. “Yeah man, sorry. I haven’t forgotten about it in like, two years. Pretty sure you actually offering isn’t gonna make it go away.”

He doesn’t look at Jonny after that, just shuts his eyes and lets the soreness of the game wash over him.

 

~

 

**January 29th, 2014**

_Chicago Blackhawks win 5-2 over the Vancouver Canucks._

 

~

 

The team bonding trip to Las Vegas is—weird. For Pat, at least. Jonny throws himself into it, corralling people for shows and meals and drinks, as if he can transform off-ice unity into on-ice performance through sheer determination, but Pat’s been feeling too thrown to enjoy watching Shawzy and Bollig heckle Antti into losing dramatically at craps. He ends up chilling with Bicks during their first day off, if only to keep their somber moods from dragging down the rest of the team. Brian asks once what’s up, but lets it be without comment when Pat sidesteps the question.

He can’t skip out on the club that night; Jonny’s got a VIP lounge at this giant place a couple blocks from their hotel, and everybody’s going. It’s funny how Pat finds it strange, now, twenty some dudes going out to a club without any wives or girlfriends along—a few years ago and that was just how it was. Still, the DJ is good enough to drag even the most married of men to the dance floor, and Pat finds himself in the unusual position of holding court with whomever’s passing through the private room for a break. Bicks gets dragged off by a persistent Shawzy eventually, and the haul of new dads end up in some drinking contest involving increasingly bizarre baby-related  _never have I evers_ that works its way down to the bar, leaving Pat and Saader having a comparatively sober conversation, slouched into one of the low, wide booths around the room.

“He’s just so, so—” Pat pauses and sucks down another gulp of his beer. “I don’t get how you didn’t crack under his, like, tutelage, man. We were  _peers_  and I still wanted to punch him every day.”

Not that sober, then, if he’s bitching about Jonny.

“Well,” Saader starts slowly, and Pat’s pretty sure he’s trying not to laugh at him. Fucker loves keeping his wits about him when everyone else is getting sloppy, it’s his secret weapon. “I guess I’m hard on myself the same way, so it wasn’t anything really new? Like, he mostly says stuff I already know, or stuff I wish I knew.”

“But he’s so  _rude_  about it. He made Viktor cry once.”

“I still think that’s a rumour somebody made up,” Saader says dubiously. “And, I dunno. I respect how he’s blunt? Like, I’ve played with some guys—for some guys—who are too worried about what you’re gonna think about them to tell the truth. Jonny just says it.”

“And terrifies all the rookies.”

“Not all of them.”

“Shawzy told me a couple of years ago that there’s a tradition in Rockford, when you get sent back down, of sharing all the worst things Jonny’s ever said to you without realizing it.”

“Well, yeah,” Saader says, and then makes a guilty face. “I mean, don’t tell him that! It’s a joke, everybody down there knows it’s worth it, and that it’s just cause he cares. That’s what I mean, I respect that he puts the team first, even if it doesn’t make him popular.”

“Doesn’t make who popular?” Jonny asks, making Saader jump out of his skin as he drops down next to him.

Pat grins with all his teeth, and Saader shoots him a wide, pleading look.

“Torts,” Pat says, after making Saader sweat for a moment.

Jonny makes a disapproving sound. “Shoulda had more self control than to get suspended like that, though. Shitty for the team to lose him for all those games.”

“Yeah, almost as bad as a captain putting himself out for half the season,” Pat needles.

“Hey,” Jonny says, frown weakened by the alcohol. “I didn’t give myself a concussion.”

“Didn’t make it better by playing through it.” Pat’s not sure why he’s poking this bear, except that his mind’s been caught up in the 2011/12 season for weeks, now. It was when everything went to shit, and Pat keeps wishing he could go back and—not  _fix_ it, but figure out why it had to be fixed in the first place.

“Ugh,” Jonny says grumpily. “It wasn’t like I meant it to go like that.”

“What, uh,” Saader starts, and then stops when both of them swing round to look at him.

“Yeah?” Jonny asks. He actually looks pretty loose, considering this is one of his least favourite topics, but the respect Saader has for him is mutual. It’s kind of beautiful to see, Pat thinks. Saader’s been as good for Jonny as Jonny has for him, in many ways.

“I guess, I just wondered why you played through it. I know protocol’s gotten stricter since then, but it wasn’t that long ago, so…” Saader trails off, expression a mixture of curious and wary.

“Honestly?” Jonny asks Saader, as serious an expression as he ever gets on his face. Saader recognizes it, straightening in between Jonny and Pat.

“Of course.”

“It was a really shitty year, for the team. We couldn’t get it together, the atmosphere in the room had gone to shit, we had the same problems at centre only worse—I honestly didn’t believe I could step out on that.” Jonny lets out a breath, but his gaze stays even on Saader. “I knew, underneath it all, that I was hurt, but I didn’t let myself admit it, because I couldn’t handle the idea of letting the team down.”

Saader just nods, solid as ever.

“Don’t make the same mistake,” Jonny says intently.

“Yeah, learn from his mistakes, young Padawan, that’s all this guy is good for anyway,” Pat says, breaking the somber mood and reaching around Saader to— _gently_ —whack Jonny on the head. “Don’t try and be a hero, you’ll just end up losing brain cells. Also, more booze, this is supposed to be bonding, not brooding.”

Saader grins and gets up—crawling over Jonny when he just sprawls back and refuses to get out of the way with a fond eye-roll. Pat’s pleased—everybody should recognize how ridiculous Jonny gets, and he was worried that Saader was taking him too seriously. At the same time, Pat thinks, it’s possible he’s made the mistake of not taking Jonny seriously  _enough_. He eyes Jonny, a couple feet away on the banquette.

“Was some of that me? The shit year.”

“You were doing the best you could under crappy circumstances, Kaner.” It’s almost word-for-word Jonny’s line for Pat’s less-that-stellar performance that season. It’s his press line and his line for Pat himself, and Pat’s never sure if that makes it more or less believable.

“I don’t mean my hockey, I meant you getting over me. Or deciding you had to.”

Jonny looks down at his empty glass, frowning.

“Because, I mean. You didn’t have to, like, add to everything else. I wasn’t  _unhappy_  with it.” Pat’s drunk, and he’s not sure Jonny’s going to get his rambling; he’s not sure  _he_  gets his rambling. “I could have like, helped, if you hadn’t been so pissed off at me for no reason.”

“You did help, you stepped up—”

“With you, dickface, not with the team.”

“I—no,” Jonny says, shaking his head. “It wasn’t, I wasn’t angry at you or anything. It’s just—we were  _friends_ , and everything else was falling apart, and the idea that that would, too, was—it seemed safer to end it. Before I fucked it up, more.”

“It wouldn’t have.”

“It did with the team,” Jonny says nonsensically, and Pat gapes.

“You’re, you’re equating playing with a concussion to fucking me?”

“No! That’s, no,” Jonny says, and he can’t continue because Saad comes back with Shawzy and the Swedes in tow, and that’s it for serious conversation for the night.

 

~

 

Pat’s been feeling out to sea for pretty much all of January. When it settles, Friday morning in the hotel in Las Vegas, it’s as abrupt and startling as a ship running aground.

“We aren’t friends.”

“What?”

“We’ve never been friends,” Pat repeats, impatient. “Can I come in?”

Jonny’s holding the door to his hotel room open, in jeans and an unbuttoned dress shirt, mouth open.

“Uh, okay?” Jonny steps back and lets him inside, and then watches as Pat paces across the hotel room floor to the open balcony door. Pat doesn’t go outside; he kicks at the stoop and then turns on his heel.

“I never got it.”

“Never got—”

“ _Why_  we weren’t friends.”

“Kaner,” Jonny says, mouth twisting. “Of course you’re my friend.”

“No, see,” Pat says, licking his lips and finding the word,  _finally_. “I’m—I’m Kaner when we’re friendly, but that’s just. Teammates. Buddies, maybe, and I guess  _fuck_ buddies for a while, but you always walked away from anything more. I thought it was because you didn’t really like me. But it wasn’t that at all, you’ve always liked me.”

He pauses, throat dry. Jonny’s standing stock still, hands folded tight at his sides. Pat thought he’d be defensive, but it’s a different sort of stillness. An expectant one.

“You were in love with me.”

Jonny shuts his eyes, and then opens them. They’re clear; hard, even.

“You already—we talked about that.” Which is true, at least for their usual level of communication. “You weren’t—you were straight, and then when you weren’t, it wasn’t—it wasn’t like that for you. I got it. I  _got over it_.”

“But  _I_ didn’t get it!” Pat says, too loud. He’s breathlessly angry, enough to break everything just to see what’s left standing at the end. He has to  _know_ , he can’t watch anymore. “You’re such a fucking  _martyr_ , Jon. Except you’re shit at it because you don’t get that you’re not actually protecting anyone.”

“Fuck you,” Jonny spits, meeting Pat’s fury with his own. “Fuck you, I was offering something and you—you could just say  _no_ , you don’t have to throw it back in my fucking face.”

“You were offering  _shit,”_ Pat yells. “You were gonna, what, fuck me and date Lindsey and get exactly  _nothing_  that you actually want? So everybody else gets what  _you_  think they want and you get to pretend you’re the best fucking captain ever? Poster-boy for the league with a hot girlfriend who doesn’t like sucking dick, thanks very much.” He’s sneering, now, and it’s cruel, but he’s too angry to care.  _Fuck_  Jonny.

Jonny turns on his heel and goes straight for the door, like he’s fucking walking away from Pat—again,  _again_ —but he doesn’t touch the handle, just presses a fist to the door and stops. Pat waits; it doesn’t seem like he’s going to say anything.

“You said you were over it,” Pat says, voice tight. “But I’m not.”

Jonny lets out a strangled laugh and turns around, sliding down the door. “Don’t tell me you were in love with me, I won’t believe you.”

“Of course I wasn’t in love with you, I didn’t think you even  _liked_  me half the time,” Pat says, incredulous.

“I don’t think it actually works like that,” Jonny says. He’s staring up at him from the other side of the room, and every inch adds to the vastness of the space between them.

Pat sighs, says, “For you, maybe.”

Pat takes a few steps back into the room, and then sinks down to the floor at the foot of the bed. He shuts his eyes, runs his fingernails across the rough carpet beside him. Jonny’s so quiet he can hardly hear him breathing.

“I’ve never wanted someone I couldn’t have,” Pat says, and it’s mostly true. Crushes, infatuations—he’s never fallen further, never so far he couldn’t right himself without too much pain. “Maybe I’m selfish, or something. I like people who are into me.”

“I—”

“Did your fucking best to pretend you weren’t.”

“Yeah.”

“God,” Pat says, burying his face into his hands and scrubbing. “This is so fucked.”

“I’m sorry,” Jonny says, his voice hoarse and honest. “I never wanted to make you think I didn’t like you, or respect you. But—we can fix this, now. We’ve been—we can be friends. Forget that I offered—”

“I don’t want to fuck around,” Pat interrupts. "That's—we can't go back to that."

Jonny sucks in a breath, and when Pat looks over, nods once. Resigned.

Pat touches his tongue to his teeth, and leans towards Jonny.

“I keep wondering what it would’ve been like.”

“You just said you didn’t—”

“To date you.”

Jonny blinks.

“You never gave me a chance,” Pat says. “You were so sure I wouldn’t take it.”

“You wouldn’t have.”

“I think you’re wrong.” He smiles, a tired, small thing. “But we’ll never know now, huh?”

 

~

 

Pat's back in his room for less than five minutes when there's a banging on his door. Jonny's on the other side, doesn't wait for an invitation before he's pushing Pat back inside.

"I did get over you," Jonny says, one hand on Pat's wrist to keep him from going anywhere. "I learned how to not be in love with you anymore, because it was killing me."

"Good for you," Pat says, wary.

"And you're just curious, because it's something new, something you never got to have."

Pat shrugs. He doesn't  _know_ , is the thing. It might be easier if he knew what he wanted, if he could throw himself at Jonny and say they were gonna be so good together, forever. It isn't that easy, and they've come too far to pretend.

"So let's start over."

"I thought we already were," Pat says. "Real friends, not just buddies."

"No," Jonny says, sounding frustrated. "I mean, yes, I want that. But this is—I don't want to be a martyr. I don't want to never know. What it's like to date you."

Pat freezes. Jonny's thumb presses tight against the veins on his wrist.

Jonny gives him a crooked grin; Pat can see the fear behind it, this time.

"Have dinner with me?"

"I have dinner plans with the rookies," Pat says faintly. “The not-rookies. The Brandons. You know.”

"Skip it."

"And tell them?"

Jonny shrugs. "Whatever. The truth, if you want."

Pat can't help the smile that breaks across his face. He ducks in to press his forehead against Jonny's shoulder, and laughs.

"I'll tell them I was catching up with a good friend."

 

~

 

**February 1st, 2014**

_Chicago Blackhawks lose in a shootout, 2-1 to the San Jose Sharks._

 

~

 

“That looks bad.”

Jonny looks away from the mirror, over to where Pat’s leaning in the bathroom door. He’s got dark, mottled bruising along his upper rib cage, under his arm and spanning around his back.

“I was more worried about the shoulder,” Jonny says, pressing his fingers into meat of it. “But it’s just tweaked, I guess.”

“Good,” Pat says, stepping fully into the bathroom and standing behind Jonny. “From the bench we’d thought you’d broken something. Reverse Stamkos.”

Jonny closes his eyes. Pat’s not sure if it’s at the sensation of Pat running his fingers along the hot, darkened skin of his ribs, or at the idea of putting himself out for so many months. Pat presses his mouth to Jonny’s shoulder and lets his hand trace down Jonny’s side to rest on his hip.

Jonny opens his eyes, meets Pat’s in the mirror.

“I’m not gonna put myself out, this time.”

“I hope not,” Pat says lightly. “I’ve got a gold medal to take from you in a couple of weeks.”

“You wish,” Jonny snorts.

“I kind of do,” Pat says apologetically. “It’s all right, I’ll let you have something in return.”

“Oh yeah?” Jonny asks, and then shoves Pat off his back when Pat waggles his eyebrows and grins.

Pat laughs, and steps back towards the hotel room. “I’m gonna, back to mine—” he says, jerking a thumb towards the door. “I just wanted to make sure you were in one piece.”

“Or you could. Stay.” Jonny says, starting out uncertain, and then putting more force behind it. “Stay.”

Pat hesitates. Last night, they’d met up with the team after dinner and had an early, separate night for the pre-game flight to San Jose the next morning. Dinner had felt good—some hockey talk, some sorting out exactly what they each meant by this, and Pat had honestly been okay with the fact that they hadn’t been able to sleep together at the end of it. Part of him  _wants_ , but that’s, in so many ways, the old part, the part he doesn’t want driving this thing anymore. He’s been resigned to being into Jonny’s everything for years, now, and Pat can’t help but wonder if they need to take a different track.

“Just to sleep,” Jonny adds. “I’m beat, and this hurts, and I hate shootouts, so, stay?”

“ _You_  hate shootouts,” Pat says skeptically, quirking a grin. “Dude, you realize that one put you at fifty percent all-time?”

“I know,” Jonny says, with an embellished sigh. “And yet everyone talks about  _your_  soft hands.”

“Keep talking about  _soft hands_  and this isn’t going to be just sleeping,” Pat says, but he can tell it’s the fact that he leans over to unlace his shoes that has Jonny relaxing, not the joke or the innuendo. It’s knowing that, though, that makes Pat think  _wanting_  Jonny isn’t going to take away from everything else. Pat strips down to his boxers, hanging his suit in the closet and digging a t-shirt out of Jonny’s suitcase, while Jonny sets up his phone alarms and pulls back the covers.

Pat catches his arm before he gets in. “You are going to, though—right?”

Jonny turns to face him, and Pat lets his hand slide down to Jonny’s, fingers wrapping together.

“Am I going to what?”

“Show me your soft hands,” Pat answers, smile just this side of dirty. “And, uh, dick. But that shouldn’t be soft.”

Jonny’s mouth quirks, but straightens quickly. “Yeah,  _yeah_ , of course. I mean, I already offered.”

“Out of like, some fucked-up sense of obligation,” Pat says darkly.

“Pat.” Jonny shakes his head, and pulls Pat in, letting go of his hand to slide both palms around Pat’s back, low on his waist, until they’re pressed flush together. Pat has to tilt his neck back to keep eye-contact. Jonny’s a little red, but he doesn’t look away, just lets his hands drift down to Pat’s ass and pulls  _up._

 _Fuck_ , Pat mouths, feeling Jonny’s dick twitch and swell against his abs.

“You’re not the only one who’s thought about it for years,” Jonny admits, breaking his gaze with Pat to lean down and press a kiss to the shell of Pat’s ear. Pat shivers and wraps his hands around Jonny’s waist, thumbs rubbing at the jut of his hipbones, letting one hand drift up Jonny’s bare chest. Pat rubs his fingers over a nipple to feel Jonny shiver, and then has to whine and press his own erection against Jonny’s muscled thigh when Jonny’s tongue darts out and swipes down his ear. Jonny pulls him in again, fingers pressed tight to Pat’s ass, letting him find the friction between them.

“Please,” Pat says softly. “Fuck—Jonny, I want—”

“Yeah,” Jonny says, low, but he’s pulling away. “I will, I  _want_  to, I promise. But.” He’s flushed and hard and Pat wants to get filthy with him, get wrecked,  _but_.

“But it’s late, and we’re tired,” Pat says, smiling to let Jonny know he’s got him on this. There’s nothing about this that can’t keep, that won’t still be there tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. “And you hate shootouts. At least, when we lose.”

Jonny laughs, crawling into bed. “Yeah. I mean, I do have stuff, if you want—”

“Naw,” Pat says, going around to the other side and following Jonny in. “I mean, I do want you to fuck me, but maybe—in my bed. Or yours. Not on a road trip.”

“Exactly,” Jonny says. “I mean, first, there’s—Sochi?” He sounds apologetic about it, but, yeah.

“Jesus,” Pat says. “Our timing sucks.”

He lets Jonny settle in before leaning over him, propped up on one elbow, to hit the light switch on the bedside table. Jonny’s hand catches the back of his head in the dark before he can pull away, and Pat lets Jonny pull him down, mouths pressing together, steady and chaste until Pat exhales and Jonny’s lips part to catch it. It’s too hard not to chase the slick warmth of Jonny’s mouth with his tongue, so Pat does. It’s their first kiss in years, Pat thinks hazily, and then: Jonny started most of the others, too. The thought makes him draw back.

“Hey,” Pat says, pressing a palm to Jonny’s chest. “This isn’t—it’s not all on you, to stay in the game. You should know that—I’m all in, too. I should have realized that before.”

He can’t see Jonny’s expression in the dark, but he can feel the thump of his heartbeat under his hand, a little fast but not racing.

“If we do this,” Jonny says, voice low with exhaustion, but so present.

“We  _are_.”

“Yeah, we are. I mean. You said you couldn’t hide it.”

It takes Pat a moment to remember, but he does.

“You said, for the right person, you wouldn’t either,” Pat says.

“Yeah. Okay,” Jonny says. Pat pulls back and lies down next to him. “We can, we’re on the same page. Let’s just…”

“Get this right, first,” Pat finishes for him, relaxing at Jonny’s soft agreement.

This is fragile, Pat knows; the new and the old of their relationship pulling at each other awkwardly, but Pat thinks that with both of them  _here_ , with their sticks on the ice and heads up, it won’t break. He leans over to his left, tucks his head against Jonny’s bare shoulder, and sleeps.

 

~


End file.
